"Webbiquity" is about being everywhere online when and where buyers are looking for what you sell. It's what I help B2B clients achieve through a coordinated strategy of SEO, search marketing, social media, brand management, content marketing, and influencer relations, supported by the right marketing technology.

Panda, Penguin, Phantom, Hummingbird. Disappearing keyword data. Personal / universal / local / mobile search. These are indeed “interesting times” for SEO professionals, with rapid and wide-ranging changes to the search landscape being announced at an accelerating pace.

Given all of this change, what are the best practices for SEO as we head into 2014? Which SEO strategies, tactics, and ranking factors still apply? How have SEO techniques changed in the post-Penguin world? How do you recover rankings if your site is hit by a penalty?

Find the answers to these questions and more here in more than two dozen of the best SEO guides of 2013 so far.

SEO Guide, Tips and Best Practices

Amanda DiSilvestro and Nick LaRosa outline new SEO strategies, tools and resources. Among the strategies recommended are taking advantage of local search (e.g., by completely filling out profiles on Yelp, Bing Places, Yahoo Local, and Google+ Local) and posting frequently (“The more you post, the better chance you have for link building, sharing, and engagement opportunities—all important when it comes to SEO”).

Brian Rauschenbach outlines three broad areas important to focus on post-Panda, and three types of activities to avoid, such as complicated sitemaps and navigation: “With Panda, Google has pretty consistently made it clear that simple navigation is best; websites that require too much digging to find desired content could be negatively affected.”

Matt Peters breaks down the latest study into high-correlation factors for website rank. While there is a great deal of data here, at a high level: backlinks remain the most important part of the algorithm (though quality matters more than quantity; on-page keyword usage is still fundamental; and social factors may be more correlational than causational with high rankings.

Following up on the post above, Rand Fishkin presents the weighting of categories of ranking factors in Google, based on a survey of 128 SEO professionals. More than half of all the factors that determine a page’s rank are based on backlinks (e.g., quality of sites linking to the domain, anchor text distribution) or page-level keyword usage (content quality, relevance, meta tags, etc.).

Rekha Mohan outlines a process for SEO in the post-Panda and Penguin world. The English is a bit rough but the information is useful. Most of what’s covered is well-trod ground, but the detail behind developing searcher personas and considering buyer intent are interesting.

Krista LaRiviere steps through a process for reporting on SEO efforts to a client, starting wih five key questions such reporting should answer for clients (among them: “What impact did these efforts have on the web presence for organic search?”), and proceeding through setting expectations, goals, and benchmarks, and driving action items.

The always engaging Debra Murphy details five tactics for optimizing rankings on Google, such as using responsive design to optimize cross-device user experiences: “This saves resources for your website and for Google’s crawlers. A responsive design makes it easier for your users to interact with, share, and link to your content while also helping Google’s algorithms assign the most relevant indexing properties for the content.”

Once you get past the annoying pop-ups on this site, you’ll find a detailed and valuable post from Neil Patel highlighting attributes that Google frowns upon in determining search rank (e.g., spam (comment and otherwise), malware, duplicate content, low quality inbound links) as well as things Google likes: authoritative content, social signals, and adapting your website to user needs.

Writing that “(in) SEO strategy for competitive niches…you need to win each of the small battles before you even think about declaring yourself the winner of the war,” Dennis Miedema recommends content marketing, local SEO, and industry networking among other strategies in industries with a high degree of SEO competition.

Elisa Gabbert suggests that over-optimized anchor text, anchor text through infographic links, and guest posting are SEO tactics to ease up on. The first is obvious; the second two are more controversial, as exhibited in the large number of comments generated by this post.

SEO Audit Tips and Techniques

Rebecca Churt details a process for performing a competitive SEO analysis, beginning with identifying key competitors (in both search and the real world) and proceeding through taking action on your findings: “Think about how you will use this information — whether it be for your content strategy, product or service positioning, social engagement tactics, etc. — all of which help with your SEO in the long run.”

AJ Kumar outlines a five-step process for performing an SEO audit on an existing website, from checking on-page optimization title tag content and length to comparing the site’s backlink profile to that of competitive sites in order to “uncover link-building patterns in your industry that you should be paying attention to.”

Glenn Gabe explains how even on a small website, a “lite” SEO audit can expose issues such as missing 301 redirects, broken links, site speed issues, and backlink problems (or simply a lack of relevant backlinks).

SEO Infographics

Jim Dougherty shares an infographic comparing “old” to “new” SEO practices, for example, the shift in importance from technical knowledge to marketing knowledge (unquestionable), from optimizing for search engines to optimizing for users, and from link building to link earning.

This beautifully crafted infographic covers social, backlinking, technical and content-related factors in SEO. Among the key takeaways are that keyword domains and links have lost relevance, and that brands are the exception to many rules. Be cautious about placing too much faith in the accuracy of every factor, however, as advised in the (copius) comments generated by this post.

Another excellent infographic illustrating the diference between “old” SEO (e.g., targeting a specific, narrow set of keywords based on search volume) and new SEO tactics for the post-Panda world (e.g., targeting a wider range of keywords based on intent and conversion data).

Post-Penguin SEO Guides

Brien Shanahan reports on high-traffic websites hit with Penguin penalties, including among several truly spammy sites unfortunately SalvationArmy.com, one of the most reputable and highly-rated charitable organzations, noting that “While Salvationarmy.com has many valuable links, it also appears to have thousands of links from low-quality websites.” He goes on to explain why these sites are penalized and how to recover from a Penguin penalty.

Contending that “Content marketing isn’t new. It’s just a new buzzword picked up by other industries that suddenly found out they could to ‘do SEO,’, but they didn’t want to ‘do SEO,’ so they tried to make it more special. It isn’t,” Kristine Schachinger positions content marketing as just another SEO tactics, albeit one that’s always been very important, along with on-page optimization, legitimate link building, optimizing site load speed, and avoiding or fixing crawl errors.

Matt Burns explains seven changes to link-building tactics and their effects in the post-Panda environment: tiered linking and excessive keyword-match links are out, high authority and social links are, and guest blogging is in…for now.

The brilliant David Harry argues that SEO today is not about link building but rather about “Content + Outreach + Social + Promotion + Brand reach,” which incorporates content development, PR, social media, and online advertising. Sounds just like web presence optimization (WPO), though he doesn’t use that term.

How to Recover from a Search Engine Penalty

Jason Acidre supplies seven tips for recovering from “Panda dance” penalties in search rankings, including improving low-performing landing pages (“Start with the pages that you believe are important and optimize these landing pages to mainly increase user dwell time”) and making updates to evergreen landing pages, such as lists of industry resources.

Glenn Gabe (again) explains how to recover from penalties resulting from “Phanteguin,” the “one-two punch from Google” on sites hit by both Phantom and Penguin. He explains not just the differences between the two algorithmic changes, but also between Penguin 1.0 and Penguin 2.0, how to identify a Phanteguin penalty, and steps to take to recover lost rankings and traffic.

David Mercer provides a detailed, step-by-step account of a real-world recovery from a Panda penalty, from improving site speed and fixing broken links to redesigning the page template and disavowing low0-quality backlinks. Some of his advice will be hard to swallow, however, such as “stop syndicating content.” And anyway, isn’t Google Authorship supposed to take care of that issue?

Technical SEO

Matthew Barby demonstrates how to measure page load time and then minimize it (focused on WordPress sites) using a variety of techniques, from compressing images and caching “everything” to setting up a content delivery network.

Noting that changing URLs to a more search-friendly structure can cause 404 errors, traffic loss and even reduced site authority, James Parsons details two methods for identifying 404 errors and correcting them, in this helpful technical post.

If your website traffic from organic search has fallen over the past year, take some small solace in knowing you’re not alone—in fact, you’re in good (if not happy) company.

Image credit: Young Digital Lab

According to research from BuzzFeed, “Search traffic to publishers has taken a dive in the last eight months, with traffic from Google dropping more than 30%…While Google makes up the bulk of search traffic to publishers, traffic from all search engines has dropped by 20% in the same period.” Organic search visits have fallen significantly to A-list publishers like Time, Sports Illustrated, Us Weekly and Rolling Stone.

It’s not quite clear why this is happening. BuzzFeed mentions changes in behavior, greater use of social networks for content discovery, and a 52% increase in traffic from “‘Dark social,’ that netherland of direct traffic” (i.e., unknown sources), and concludes “We can draw a lot of assumptions but few conclusions from the drop in search traffic.”

The Tutorspree blog offers another possible answer: Google is intentionally de-emphasizing organic results (free clicks) in favor of search advertising results (for which it gets paid). While there’s no before and after (which would have been very helpful) and results will vary, obviously, based on the nature of the search, this example shows how organic results can comprise only a quarter or less of total screen real estate on a commercial search, with paid results accounting 60% of the visible display, and other results like maps or images taking up the remaining screen area.

And it’s not only Google. Both Google and Bing are now displaying fewer than ten organic search results on certain queries: eight, seven, even as few as four in some cases. That means organic results which used to appear in the middle or lower half of page one in search results are now banished to page two, significantly reducing the likelihood of attracting the click.

Finally, algorithmic changes implemented by Google (and subsequently mimicked by other search engines) over the past 18 months have impacted traffic to b2c and b2b websites. Much has been written about how Panda and Penguin may negatively impact rankings of commercial websites in search results.

Given that b2b websites attract, on average, more than 40% of all traffic from organic search (and close to 90% of that from Google), the results above are clearly of great concern. But what does it mean?

Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” What’s happening today, however, is that many b2b vendors, news publishers and other commercial website owners are doing the same things in the same way and actually getting different (worse) results—because the environment has changed.

So in order to maintain and grow website traffic, online marketing practices have to change as well. Companies need to take a broader view of their overall online visibility and embrace a web presence optimization (WPO) approach.

Why the WPO Model is Important

With potentially less future traffic available from search, given changes in both technology and user behavior, the WPO model is valuable because:

WPO is about total online visibility—not just search. Yes, SEO (which increases website visibility) is a key component of WPO, but it’s only one component. WPO is about creating valuable, highly relevant content and then leveraging across multiple channels. So if your prospective buyers are relying less on search but more on social media, or established industry news sources, or on expert “influencers,” or even on advertising, WPO is about making sure your brand is visible in all of those places.

WPO is about helping, not manipulating. Google wants (or at least claims to want) to provide searchers with the most relevant results for their queries. Searchers want to find the most relevant results. The WPO model is about creating the most relevant results for buyers looking for what you are offering, but also about being linked from, quoted in, recommended by, or sponsoring other relevant results.

WPO is Google-proof. Because it’s designed to help and not manipulate, the concepts of WPO should (theoretically at least) never run counter to Google algorithm changes. And if your prospective buyers are using Google less, WPO maximizes your brand’s visibility in whatever channels, media or sources they are using in its place.

How to Get Your Traffic Back

Here are a few concrete steps for using WPO principles to adapt to and counteract declining search traffic.

Figure out where your prospective buys are looking, and be there. Use social media and news monitoring tools to identify the online venues where your prospective buyers are hanging out, discussing your company, your industry, and your competitors.For many b2b companies, LinkedIn Groups are a rich environment for discovering and participating in these conversations. If your buyers are highly technical however, they may be more likely to hang at sites like Stack Overflow, CodeGuru or Spiceworks.

Experiment. Go beyond the “big three” social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) and check out avenues for sharing like exploreB2B, Quora, Scoop.It, and for blogs specifically, Triberr.

Use news releases for exposure, not backlinks. Until fairly recently, common SEO guidance was to “Create backlinks from (press releases) to…supporting pages on your website. Make sure the anchor text of the hyperlink is the keyword phrase you are optimizing for.” But Google now frowns on anchor text links in news releases.That doesn’t mean that news releases now have no value in driving site traffic, but it does change the strategy.
First, make sure your news releases are truly newswortthy, and worth sharing. Second, optimize news releases themselves for search. Third, use news releases as part of an overall strategy to build and develop relationships with journalists, which over time can lead to citations and even backlinks which actually are valuable for driving direct and search visits to your website.

Use directories based on their relevance and value, but as with news releases—not just for backlinks. In early 2013, Google devalued general directory links for search rankings. That is, the old SEO strategy of improving search ranking simply by building or buying lots of links from broad-topic web directories is no longer effective. That does not mean, however, that all directories are worthless.

It’s still worthwhile to seek out backlinks from quality, human-edited, industry-specific online directories, such as vendor directories published by trade publications and industry associations. The two key questions to ask are 1) would your prospective buyers actually be likely to find my site and visit it from this directory? And 2), do you feel good about your company being listed in this directory (or does it feel a bit sleazy to be listed alongside online casinos, web pharmacies, miracle weight loss, make-big-money-now schemes and the like)?

Use guest blog posts for exposure (and if you get a backlink–that’s a bonus). Guest-posting is still a viable SEO practice, for the moment at least. But it is commonly abused through poor approaches. Best practice is to develop a relationship with the blogger before asking for the guest post opportunity; asking for the opportunity with a personal note; understanding their audience and proposing a topic that is suitable; and not requesting (or worse, requiring) any specific quid pro quo.

Finally, don’t over-rely on paid advertising but do make it part of your online marketing mix. Experiment with AdWords, social network advertising, Bizo, and other ad networks. Many offer pay-per-click or even pay-per-conversion options, so costs and results are controllable. While paid advertising has no effect on SEO, it does increase your brand’s online exposure and drives traffic to specific landing pages and offers.

In the end, no one knows whether the broad drop in search traffic is a temporary aberration or a long-term trend. But utilizing WPO tactics to broaden your brand’s online exposure and potential sources of web traffic is a winning strategy either way.

Editor’s note: a version of this post originally appeared on ChamberofCommerce.com

Given that more than 90% of both business-to-business and local consumer purchases now begin with online search, search engine optimization (SEO) has become essential for business success. Little wonder then that two-thirds of small to midsized-business owners plan to increase SEO efforts this year.

While specific best practices for SEO have evolved over time, the two core attributes for high rankings have remained constant: relevance and authority. Relevance is determined by the subject matter of a website and on-page optimization techniques (e.g., using keywords in headlines, meta titles and image names), while authority is primarily based on the quantity and quality of incoming links to a website.

So, once you’ve developed useful and compelling content, incorporating the words and phrases your customers are likely to use when searching, how can you attract links to your site? Here are four helpful sources to go after, and three others to stay away from.

Four Worthwhile Link Sources

Local directories and high-quality industry directories. Virtually all businesses can benefit from providing their company and contact details to the local versions of Google, Bing and Yahoo!, as well as online yellow pages and other similar directories. GetListed.org, a site that evaluates your business presence and directly connects to more than a dozen such directories, is a great place to start.

Industry-specific directories, often published by trade associations and publishers, are another important link source. You can often find the most authoritative (in the eyes of the search engines) directories specific to your type of business simply by searching for them. For example, if you own a restaurant in Minneapolis, a Google search for “lists of restaurants in Minneapolis” returns more than two dozen lists just in the first three pages of results—some general and some specific to certain neighborhoods, categories and price ranges.

Business partners. While linking to irrelevant sites purely for SEO purposes is not advised (see “Reciprocal link schemes” below), trading links with business partners and complementary firms is helpful both to visitors and your rankings.For example, a manufacturer may trade links with retailers that sell its products, service providers that install or fix those products, and even suppliers of key components. As long as the links are topically relevant and connect high-quality sites, those links have SEO value.

News and media coverage. Links from industry news sources are among the most valuable for building authority. You don’t have to get links from the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal (though if you can, obviously, that would be very cool) in order to improve your search rankings; links from relevant trade journals and local media can also have significant value.One method for obtaining links is to create search-optimized news releases and distribute them through an online service like PRWeb. Another is to work with journalists directly, or hire an agency to help you. Announce a new product, get your executives or other subject matter experts quoted, help out a local charity, speak at an industry event—all are great sources of potential media coverage and links.

Social media. Create business accounts and actively participate on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+. If you’ve got a highly visual product, use Flickr and Pinterest; if you can make video part of the mix, set up a company channel on YouTube and Vimeo.

As the search engines make social signals an increasingly important element in rankings, the links that you create—and that your customers, followers and industry influencers share on your behalf—take on greater importance for SEO.

Three Links Sources to Avoid

Reciprocal link schemes. Unlike legitimate link-trading (see above), link schemes are manipulative practices designed to “trick” search engines into giving your site a higher ranking. Such links have little or no value to your site visitors.These links are generally to sites that are completely unrelated to your business and often to somewhat sketchy destinations (e.g., online casinos, “miracle” weight loss products, get-rich-quick schemes or questionable web pharmacies).Such schemes are still around because, as with other manipulative practices, they actually worked at one time. But with recent changes made by the search engines, particularly Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, such tactics are now far more likely to hurt rather than help—and may even get your site banned from search results.

Purchased links. If you come across online advertisements touting “1,000 Backlinks for $14.00” or some similar offering, run—don’t walk—away. Buying links is not only no longer an effective strategy, it is highly likely to get your site penalized. These links are very often low-quality, containing hundreds or thousands of unrelated and often low-quality outbound links, making them easy for search engines to spot.

Low-quality general directories and “bad neighborhoods.” As noted above, directory links can be helpful for SEO. But not all directories are created equal. Search engines will confer authority on your site for links from high-quality directories, but frown on links from low-quality sources.Since “quality” is a subjective term, before pursuing a link from any site, ask yourself: how likely is it that your actual customers or sales prospects would ever visit this site and find you there? What other types of businesses are listed? Would you be proud to be listed there or a bit ambivalent about it? Does the site offer value to visitors, or is it essentially just a large collection of unrelated links?

In short, search engines want to direct searchers to the most relevant and useful results for any search query. Seeking out legitimate link sources to help guide search engines to your site is perfectly acceptable, and helpful to your search rankings. But avoid any sort of manipulative linking practices designed to deceive. The old Chiffon margarine commercial said “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” It isn’t nice to try to fool Google, Yahoo!, Ask, AOL or Bing either.

“Four characters: two mice, ‘Sniff’ and ‘Scurry,’ and two littlepeople, miniature humans in essence, ‘Hem’ and ‘Haw.’ They live in a maze, a representation of one’s environment, and look for cheese, representative of happiness and success. Initially without cheese, each group, the mice and humans, paired off and traveled the lengthy corridors searching for cheese. One day both groups happen upon a cheese-filled corridor at ‘Cheese Station C.’ Content with their find, the humans establish routines around their daily intake of cheese, slowly becoming arrogant in the process.”

When the cheese eventually runs out, the mice and the miniature human characters deal with their new cheese-less situation in different ways. The mice, “Noticing the cheese supply dwindling… have mentally prepared beforehand for the arduous but inevitable task of finding more cheese.” The humans struggle more with their reality: “Angered and annoyed, Hem demands, ‘Who moved my cheese?’…Starting to realize the situation at hand, Haw thinks of a search for new cheese. But Hem is dead set in his victimized mindset and dismisses the proposal.” The point of the tale is to promote productive approaches to dealing with change.

With its Panda and Penguin algorithm updates over the past couple of years, and most notably the recent Penguin 2.0 update, Google has been busy moving the cheese for many marketers, webmasters and SEO professionals.

SEO practitioners who cling to outmoded tactics like keyword stuffing and link buying are likely to react like Hem, feeling victimized by their loss of cheese. Same goes for those SEO software and service providers still tout their ability to help create thousands of links through link exchange partners.

On the other hand, SEO pros who’ve always practiced white hat tactics are like the mice in the story; though they may still have a lot of work to do, they are well prepared to find new cheese. For the many who have seen their rankings and traffic devoured by Penguin, here are three places to look for new cheese.

Content marketing. This is where Matt Cutts officially says you should look for new SEO cheese. Produce great content, it will attract “natural” links, and your site will end up on page one of Google. The problem, of course, is that in highly competitive search term markets—like marketing automation, real estate, auto repair, social media monitoring, or SEO services—no matter how compelling or unique your content is, it’s unlikely to be seen (and therefore to attract links) if it doesn’t rank on page one of Google, and it’s unlikely to rank highly if it doesn’t have a lot of relevant, high-quality inbound links. Call this Catch-22 cheese.

The point isn’t that producing helpful content isn’t a fantastic idea, only that content marketing is not enough. In this way, Penguin seems to favor the same publications, A-list blogs, and name-brand websites that already dominate most searches.

AdWords. This is where Google would really like you to go, because it’s how the company makes money. There’s no question AdWords can be an effective component of online strategy—it’s controllable, immediate and finely measurable. But it’s also expensive. Call this gourmet cheese.

This is akin to the way grocery stores usually sell cheese: standard cheese varieties in the dairy aisle, exotic cheeses in the deli, organic cheese in the all-natural foods section, etc. Call this a distributed cheese strategy. Grocers do it because they sell more cheese by offering different varieties in multiple locations throughout the store than they would by stacking all of it in one area. The same approach can be effective in optimizing your company’s overall web visibility, regardless of Google’s ongoing algorithmic attacks on traditional SEO.

With its progression of benignly named yet ferocious algorithm updates (Farmer, Panda, Penguin), Google continues, in its efforts to battle webspam, to confound and make life more difficult for legitimate SEO professionals and their clients as well.

Fortunately, there are a large and growing number of tools available to help SEO practitioners adapt and carry on their valiant efforts to help Google bring the most relevant (usually anyway) results to the top.

What are the best tools for finding and eliminating broken links? Which tools work best outside the U.S.? How can you develop a keyword strategy that will set your site (or your client’s site) apart from the competition? Which tools beyond the most common are most useful for developing target keyword lists?

Find the answers to these questions and many more here in almost a dozen of the best guides to SEO tools and keyword research of the past year.

SEO Tools and Reviews

Ted Ives offers quick reviews of almost a dozen of his “personal favorite free search optimization tools for SEO,” including Xenu Link Sleuth (“Perfect for finding broken links and much much more”), Screaming Frog (“an ideal tool for performing a quick site audit”) and the SEOQuake Toolbar (“great for rapidly doing a competitive analysis on a SERP”).

Mark Gottlieb reviews nine of his favorite free and fee-based SEO tools, including some common ones like SEOmoz and Screaming Frog as well as some that may be less familiar, such as Keyword Blaze (“Keyword Blaze is one of the best if not the best keyword research tool”—and it’s free.)

Dave Davies provides an outstanding list and mini-reviews of almost 80 of his “favorite resources based on what they yield and what they produce from a dollar-in-dollar-out perspective,” ranging from SEO audit and link building tools to coding tools, conversion tools, social media tools and “convenience” tools like Domain Tools (“Quick and easy access to domain information including registration, server details and location and some basic SEO information”).

Writing that “There are diseases on the web that you don’t want to get, and if you’ve had a website online for years, or if your site links to other sites, then there’s a great chance that you’ve caught some Link Rot… it doesn’t sound nice, and it’s really not nice,” Jim Boykin explains what link rot is and links to a new tool to fix it.

Duncan Parry reviews a collection of “really useful tools, some of which you will use every day” including StatsCounter (which provides “data on the market shares of search engines, browser versions, computer, and mobile hardware and operating systems here for most countries”) and keyword tools from Google, Yandex, Baidu, SEOBook, Ubersuggest and YouTube.

Keyword Research Guides and Tools

Rand Fishkin points out some of the limitations of the Google AdWords keyword for organic keyword research, lessons learned from one of his experiments (“Running discovery-focused searches in AdWords may not show you all the valuable/high-volume keyword phrases connected to a word/phrase”), and four methods for addressing this challenge.

Noting that “Choosing the right keyword is the foundation of successful search engine optimization,” Sig Ueland reviews nearly two dozen tools designed to help identify the most promising keywords for a site, ranging from the familiar (the Google AdWords keyword tool, SEMrush) to the more esoteric (Soovle, Trendistic, MetaGlossary).

Astutely noting that “Many SEOs will tend to stick with using Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool and as a result, they will most likely be targeting the exact same keywords as the competition,” Adam Whittles outlines a contrarian strategy based on long tail keywords, staring with basic research and competitive intelligence and progressing through research tools, filtering and measurement.